Donald Trump walked into a waffle restaurant in Columbus, Georgia on Saturday afternoon.
The idea, presumably, was to create an impromptu moment: to present a man who didn’t dwell on future days.
Prepositioned supporters suggest that it was rather more prepositioned. But there is no doubt that the former president seemed relaxed, confident and upbeat.
The pit stop came after his first public appearance since that remarkable allegation was revealed.
I watched from the “fake news” media pen in the back of the Columbus Convention Center as he delivered a defiant 90-minute speech.
The capacity crowd was the great and good of the Georgia Republican Party, gathered for the state’s two-day Republican Convention.
It was Trump’s trademark.
“They want to use something called the Espionage Act. Doesn’t that sound terrible?” – he said mockingly, referring to the charges against him.
“Espionage? We have a box! I have a box! Espionage…” trailed off. The crowd laughed.
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After one of his major successes as president, he returned to the prosecution.
“The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration’s Justice Department will go down as one of the most horrific abuses of power in our country’s history.
“A lot of people have said it, even Democrats have said it.”
“This brutal persecution is a travesty of justice,” he said to applause. Sometimes people stopped. Not all, but a good proportion.
“Think about it: Biden is trying to imprison his main political opponent who is beating him in the polls just like they do in Stalinist Russia or Communist China. It’s no different.” More applause.
It was a speech full of grievances. He presented himself as a victim of an establishment to get him.
“We’re going to stand up to the corrupt political establishment, we’re going to dislodge a totally corrupt Joe Biden from the White House…”
The story he’s telling is that this is all political, not legal. It’s Biden trying to stop it in court instead of facing it at the polls.
Deflection and “whataboutism” play very well. And that is the crux of it all for sectors of American society who have been so angered by the indictment.
In the Columbus convention hall I heard it repeatedly: what’s going on? Joe Biden and the classified documents found in his Delaware garage next to his Corvette? Hilary Clinton and the classified documents on her email server? Mike Pence and the classified documents found in his home?
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Trump’s accusation: “Laws apply to everyone”
American standards of justice are being called into question by the first federal indictment of a former and possible next president.
There are clear distinctions with these cases: quantity, intent, obstruction.
The number of documents in the Trump case is much larger. There appears to have been an intent to remove them from the White House and an obstruction of the National Archives and FBI’s attempts to retrieve them.
There is also clear misinformation. Trump often talks about the “1850 boxes that Biden took.”
It refers to boxes of Biden documents at the University of Delaware. They are papers from his career in the senate between 1973 and 2009. They are not secret, there is no obligation to hand them over to the National Archives and there is no crime.
Still, President Biden has been outraged by the documents found in his Corvette garage — his assurance that the “garage was locked” cemented the disbelief.
All this, not to mention the stories about his son Hunterthey reflect a real American crisis of distrust.
The 45th president of the United States has been charged, by the Justice Department of the Biden administration, with 31 of the charges related to the act of espionage: “deliberate withholding of national defense information.”
It’s a massive moment. It is not yet clear what will trigger it in America.
